


Mine Your Own Business

by patster223



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Minecraft, Post-Canon, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-05 12:20:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3119984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Raleigh laughs when Newt clicks on a desktop icon. “You two have Minecraft on these things?”</em>
</p><p>  <em>“Hermann has Minecraft on these things,” Newt says smugly, clearly pleased at Raleigh’s incredulity.</em></p><p>Somehow, Raleigh and Newt end up playing Minecraft together -- and somehow, it ends up being oddly cathartic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mine Your Own Business

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScreechTheMighty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/gifts).



> Written from [screechthemighty](http://screechthemighty.tumblr.com/), one of the winners of the [hermannholidays](http://hermannholidays.tumblr.com/) giveaway! Their prompt was "Raleigh + Newt + Minecraft" which was far too much fun to do. Thanks, screech!

Raleigh sinks into the K-Science lab’s couch with a sigh. Now that he’s finally able to slow down, his thoughts turn hazy and indistinct, wrung out by all the talking he’d done today. Raleigh's once again reminded why he’d always wanted to be a ranger rather than a member of the top brass: far fewer _meetings_ to deal with.

He’s still too wired to take a nap though, so he pulls out his phone and chooses a game he can play with a brain numbed by innumerable PowerPoint presentations. He sighs again. Finally, a chunk of time he doesn't have to allocate to placating endless government officials about the PPDC's next steps.

The blissful silence doesn’t last long, as only a few minutes later Raleigh hears the squeak of boots as that “Call me Newt” doctor enters the lab.

“Oh, Guy- uh, Ranger Becket,” Newt says. He’s holding a container of God knows what, and only gives Raleigh the briefest of glances before taking the container to his desk and examining its contents. “Look, I told Hansen I’d have the report on his desk by Monday, okay? If he wants it sooner, he can write the damn thing himself.”

Raleigh shakes his head. “I’m not here to hound you. Just looking for some peace and quiet.”

“And you thought _this_ was the place to find it?”

It's a fair question. Raleigh’s certainly heard tales of the screaming matches that apparently go down around here. But he also knows that the lab is sparsely populated and certainly less claustrophobic than his room -– after the stress of today’s meetings, he’d been willing to take his chances in order to find some solitude.

Raleigh shrugs. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Hmpf. Do what you want, just don’t touch the specimens. Or Hermann’s stuff -– and I say that for your own safety, the guy’s a menace when his chalkboards are smudged," Newt says, poking the inside of the container with a scalpel.

Raleigh grins, certain that Newt knows about the chalkboard thing from experience. “Thanks for the warning."

"It's for my own sake too, believe me. I had to hear him rant for like an _hour_ after Dr. Evans put zir hands on his chalk in Lima. Hey, what are you playing?" Newt says, nodding to Raleigh's phone. "Anything good?"  
  
"Just Minecraft,” Raleigh says. He swipes his finger across the screen to dig deeper into the mountain, swipes again to light up the new cave he's made with a torch.

At Raleigh's words, Newt actually looks up from the specimen in order to give him a curious glance “Really? What mode?”

“Uh…the survival one I think.”

Newt raises an eyebrow. It’s a gesture that’s far less eloquent than it should be, probably due to the squelching noise that Newt’s examination of the specimen makes in the background.

“Survival mode? You mean the mode where you build your home and defend it from monsters? Isn’t that a bit – I don’t know – ‘too soon?’” Despite his clear vocalization of the air quotes, Newt still takes his hand off of his specimen long enough to physically make them as well.

Raleigh laughs. “Probably. But you do realize that ‘too soon’ might not mean a lot coming from a guy with Kaiju ink, right?”

Newt squints, like he can’t tell if Raleigh is making fun of him or not. Raleigh feels bad -– he’s been reserved since Yancy's death, sure, but it’s still so easy for him to slip into the easy comradery of the Shatterdome and forget that there are still boundaries that can be crossed.

“Are you going to get another one?” Raleigh asks, hoping the question can serve as an olive branch of sorts.

Newt’s shoulders lose their tension and he goes back to his poking at his specimen. As he works, he tells Raleigh all about the new tattoos he wants. His words tumble over one another as he eagerly describes the lines and colors he’s envisioning, describes which Kaiju he wants where. Newt’s enthusiasm is infectious; it's enough to make Raleigh wonder if he should finally get some ink for himself. Maybe his brother’s PPDC ID number, or Gipsy Danger's sword…

“I can’t believe you’re playing that on a phone,” Newt says finally, cutting himself off in the middle of describing his plans for an Otachi tattoo. “Come on.”

Newt leads Raleigh to the bank of computers on Dr. Gottlieb’s side of the lab and boots a couple up.

Raleigh laughs when Newt clicks on a desktop icon. “You two have _Minecraft_ on these things?”

“ _Hermann_ has Minecraft on these things,” Newt says smugly, clearly pleased at Raleigh’s incredulity. Raleigh has a feeling that this is another one of those long-standing arguments that Newt and Dr. Gottlieb have between themselves.

“He says ‘it’s purely for scientific purposes, Newt, my boy!’” Newt mocks, slipping into an accent that must be an attempt at Dr. Gottlieb’s. “Bullshiiiit, he just likes to play it when he’s angry at his models.”

“And the PPDC let him?” Raleigh asks, astonished.

“Who was around to ask? Besides, he did actual work on it too," Newt admits. "He liked to use it to brainstorm sometimes.”

“Brainstorm?”

“You don’t want to know how many Jaeger concepts were originally modeled on Minecraft,” Newt says with a smirk. “You really- eh, nah, I’m going to tell you anyway.”

And then, weirdly enough, they start playing Minecraft together, chatting as they build their structures. Newt’s a bit bossy about the whole thing: making Raleigh play in creative mode and telling him about all of the different things he can make now that he doesn’t have to worry about killing monsters or mining. But Raleigh’s a younger brother and a soldier: if he minded bossy, he would’ve been doomed years ago.

Besides, he imagines that playing with Newt is getting off lightly compared to how Dr. Gottlieb must dictate the gameplay.

“I gotta say, I still prefer survival mode,” Raleigh says. He’s given up on helping Newt with his Godzilla model and is idly planting flowers around it instead. He think that Newt approves of the garden though, if the other man’s nod towards his screen is anything to go by.

“Typical ranger,” Newt sighs. “Always eager to smash.”

Raleigh snorts.

“Okay, okay, not _completely_ typical. Not all Rangers are like that, it's true. I’m sure Mako knows how to play a good creative mode.”

As far as concessions go, it’s not much, but it’s enough to make Raleigh laugh.

“She does,” he says. Fondness colors his voice as he remembers their long flight to Los Angeles last week, when she’d taken the game from him and created half a Jaeger before they’d landed. Of course, there hasn’t been any time for her to finish it, with all the meetings they’ve had since then.

“Survival mode is easier, but I guess the creative mode is nice in some ways,” Raleigh admits.

Newt seems to be satisfied with his Godzilla and has moved on to making some other sculpture. “Told you building was better than smashing,” he says

“ _Sometimes._ Smashing has always worked out pretty well for me, you know.” He starts making a structure alongside Newt’s, though he’s not yet sure what he wants it to be. “Building is harder. Easier in the game than in the real world though. There’s fewer obstacles, fewer rules. It's definitely less _tedious_ at least. I can see why Dr. Gottlieb likes to model on here.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly why he likes it.” Newt says. He gives Raleigh a once-over before shifting his attention back to the game. “Not quite a typical ranger I guess.”

Raleigh thinks that that’s as a good a compliment as he’s going to get from Newt for now. Which, considering the minor disaster that was their first meeting, is actually quite impressive. He doesn’t mind though. It’s nice just to sit here and play a low-stakes game with someone on a quiet afternoon.

They end up playing semi-regularly together after that, whenever they’re off-duty and need to cleanse their brains of the stress that comes with the endless process of rebuilding their world. Finding relief from that rebuilding in a kind of virtual building seems odd to Raleigh. But he supposes it isn’t any stranger than playing survival mode in order to find relief from killing monsters.

At the end of one of their sessions, a day before Raleigh has to fly across the Pacific again, Newt hands him a battered 3DS.

“It’s my old one – but this is me _lending_ it to you, okay?” Newt says firmly. “That means not a scratch on it.”

Raleigh smiles. He’d told Newt about how much he’d been dreading another ten hour flight with nothing to do. He’d assumed it’d gone in one ear and out the other, given how focused Newt had been on their game at the time, but apparently the biologist had listened.

“What’s on here?” Raleigh asks, investigating the game cartridge.

“Pokemon,” Newt says. “One of the older ones. I’ve played it a million times, you can keep it as long as you need to.”

“Pokemon, huh?” Raleigh says consideringly. He's never played it, but he kind of remembers what the franchise is about. “Isn’t a game about making monsters fight kind of – I don’t know – ‘too soon?’”

Something that Raleigh’s come to like about Newt is just how open the other man is about what he's feeling. Right now, he can see in Newt’s eyes the instant the biologist officially decides that he likes Raleigh.

“It’s a _classic_ is what it is,” Newt says. “Bet you can’t get past the third gym by the time you come back.”

“You’re on,” Raleigh says, pocketing the game and already wondering if Mako will be willing to help him rise to Newt’s challenge.

A day later, Raleigh’s smiling as he settles into the plane, thinking about what nickname he should give to his new Treeko.


End file.
